Swiss Guards
Foreign military service was outlawed by the first Swiss Federal Constitution of 1848 and a federal Law of 1859, with the only exception being the Pontifical Swiss Guard (Latin: Pontificia Cohors Helvetica, Cohors Pedestris Helvetiorum a Sacra Custodia Pontificis; Italian: Guardia Svizzera Pontificia) stationed in Vatican City.
The Hundred Swiss shared indoor guard duties with the King's Bodyguards (Garde du Corps), who were French.
The Hundred Swiss accompanied Louis XVIII into exile in Belgium the following year and returned with him to Paris following the Battle of Waterloo.
Like the eleven Swiss regiments of line infantry in French service, the Gardes suisses wore red coats.
[12] Disciplinary matters were the responsibility of Swiss officers within the regiment, under a code of punishments that was significantly harsher than that of the remainder of the French army.
The most famous episode in the history of the Swiss Guards was their defence of the Tuileries Palace in central Paris during the French Revolution.
Apart from less than a hundred Swiss who escaped from the Tuileries, some hidden by sympathetic Parisians, the only survivors of the regiment were a three-hundred-strong[14] detachment that had been sent to Normandy to escort grain convoys a few days before 10 August.
[15] The Swiss officers were mostly massacred, although Major Karl Josef von Bachmann, in command at the Tuileries, was formally tried and guillotined in September, still wearing his red uniform coat.
Two Swiss officers, the captains Henri de Salis and Joseph Zimmermann, did however survive and went on to reach senior rank under Napoleon and the Restoration.
[15] There appears to be no truth in the charge that Louis XVI caused the defeat and destruction of the Guards by ordering them to lay down their arms when they could still have held the Tuileries.
Rather, the Swiss ran low on ammunition and were overwhelmed by superior numbers when fighting broke out spontaneously after the royal family were escorted from the palace to take refuge with the National Assembly.
[38] The Papal Swiss Guard, reflecting the particular status of the Holy See and the Vatican City State and the character of the unit as a bodyguard, [32] remains an exception to this prohibition, explicitly defined between the parties.
When writing Hamlet, Shakespeare assumed (perhaps relying on his sources) that the royal house of Denmark employed a Swiss Guard: In Act IV, Scene v (line 98) he has King Claudius exclaim "Where are my Switzers?
